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Maplin

VCCP Media: Mead (l) becomes the chairman of the expanded group, while Becker is the CEO

VCCP, the full service communications
agency, has today acquired the independent media agency, adconnection. The business will be fully merged with VCCP’s
existing media operation, VCCP Media, creating a combined media capability with
billings in excess of £50m.

The staff base will be around 70 and clients will
include ASOS, Bonhams, Maplin, Jessops, Relish Broadband, Sofa.com, Vue Cinemas and MTV.

Catherine Becker, current
CEO of adconnection becomes CEO of VCCP Media and Nick Baum, MD. Paul Mead will
be the Chairman.

The deal signifies the
intent of VCCP to lead the emerging trend of connected, full service agencies
in the post-digital age, bringing market leading creative, media and data
offerings together under one roof. Founded in 2002, VCCP is currently ranked
amoungst the top 6 agencies in the UK, with 750 staff spanning across 5
offices, and billings in excess of £220m.

“We have grown a very
successful media business organically at VCCP but this deal will give us real
scale and the ability to offer clients genuine full service communications under
one roof” commented, Adrian Coleman, Founding Partner and Group CEO of
VCCP

Catherine Becker, CEO of
adconnection said: “Our two businesses
have very complementary skillsets and a fabulous client base. We share core
values around performance and innovation so I am incredibly excited about the
potential to deliver outstanding results for our clients”

The acquisition comes just
4 weeks after VCCP’s parent company Chime Communications plc was acquired and
taken private by the US based, Providence Equity Partners.

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Taking advantage of latest changes in viewing habits, adconnection has planned a fully integrated, cross-channel campaign that moves Maplin to all aspects of TV, AV and digital. In addition, through the use of extremely granular targeting of Maplin’s niche target audiences adconnection can massively reduce wastage even across multiple channels.

Alongside a first night TV roadblock and high profile spots within key ad breaks, this year’s campaign is going one step further to incorporate a number of ground-breaking video and digital formats.

The campaign will run on TV catch-up sites such as All4 (previously 4OD) and Demand 5, Sky adsmart to target relevant audiences with a frequency cap, as well as on other online video platforms. This will include in content video ads and interactive pre roll ads in which viewers will have the opportunity to select one of three Maplin ads to watch.

Henry Swift, Head of Marketing at Maplin, had this to say of the campaign: ‘With consumers increasingly watching TV & video content across a range of devices it was important to build a campaign which reflected this. By moving from a TV led to a fully Audio Visual strategy means we can tell the Maplin ‘story’ in a variety of ways and tailor content to a relevant audience’.

Dan Grossman, Account Director at adconnection“We’re looking forward to building on our successes with Maplin from last year’s TV campaigns. Key to our strategy for this year is implementing a fully integrated multi-channel campaign to amplify the effect of our TV spots. Harnessing new media technology and video formats, along with harmonised social media, gives us the opportunity to reach our audience across multiple devices in a highly targeted and efficient way”.

TV advertising, supported by a full suite of harmonised digital activity, will launch on May 3rd.